Yaning Wu

Yaning Wu

PhD student | storyteller | 🇨🇳🇺🇸🇪🇬🇰🇪🇬🇧

aug 12, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

Yes, I kept to my word :) I started preparing for my first-year assessment this week, which included looking through transparent peer review reports from journals like the BMC family to determine what my assessors might ask me about my own research. It’s been a fruitful, though challenging, process, and I’m sure I’ll ideate even more questions in the coming week. I also completed a Nature Masterclasses course on peer review (highly recommend!) and continued to develop the Discussion section of my primary analysis. And I thought I’d finished my poster for my September conference, but I’ve just spotted some potential errors, so that’s a task for next Monday!

next week

First, I’ll submit my poster to conference organisers. Then, I plan to continue trying to find holes in my proposed analyses for my first-year assessment (they already appear Swiss-cheese-like). I will also develop proposals for a modelling study using English donor data, as well as an international collaboration that I hope will come to fruition in several months (or even years (!)). Finally, because some of my proposed analyses focus on long-term risks of cardiovascular disease, I will read up on the basic epidemiology and aetiology of this umbrella of diagnoses via the Nature Reviews Disease Primers series.

outside the lab

I had the pleasure of meeting up with a neighbour from my undergraduate degree who has just started a new job in Cambridge! I was fascinated to learn about her lab research on inter-mitochondrial communication and asked whether the mitochondria used WhatsApp.

on the reading list

Pescarini JM, Williamson E, Ichihara MY, Fiaccone RL, Forastiere L, Ramond A, Nery JS, Penna MLF, Strina A, Reis S, Smeeth L, Rodrigues LC, Brickley EB, Penna GO, Barreto ML. Conditional Cash Transfer Program and Leprosy Incidence: Analysis of 12.9 Million Families From the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort. Am J Epidemiol. 2020 Dec 1;189(12):1547-1558. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwaa127.

weekly photo

image From an impromptu Saturday trip to West Cambridge’s Eddington neighbourhood, where many of my postdoc colleagues live and work.

about me

I’m Yaning (she/her), a PhD candidate in Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. I am working with colleagues in the Blood and Transplant Research Unit, the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, and NHS Blood and Transplant (England’s national blood service) to improve the safety and efficiency of voluntary whole blood donation. I’m supervised by the amazing Dr Lois Kim and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. This is my blog about my journey through this candidature, starting from nine months before my transfer of status. Please feel free to reach out at yw645 [at] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk!

november 16, 2024: a week in the life

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It’s been a week of presentations! On Wednesday, I presented findings from my first primary analyses in an intimate setting and had a great conversation with the attendees. On Thursday, I presented to a larger audience, including senior scientists within the Department of Public Health and Primary Care. I’ve also built on my manuscript draft for that primary analysis, which I hope to share with my supervisor soon. I’ve also spent several hours trying to improve on a proposal for a simulation modelling analysis according to comments from my supervisor. Finally, I’ve been working through final admin procedures for our accepted review paper!

november 9, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

Whew … it’s getting late. It’s almost bedtime and I’m still on my work computer! I would never consider this acceptable normally but have made an exception for this chaotic week. I’ve continued to respond to my supervisor’s comments on my primary analyses, realising that I will need to make substantial changes to the variables used. I’ve also made a dummy dataset that enables me to test my simulation modelling code before I receive the “real” data … though I haven’t done most of that testing yet. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve submitted revisions for our systematic review manuscript, which has now been accepted for publication!!! I hope to share the published paper with you all within the next two weeks.

november 2, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

Time for an apology … I forgot to upload a blog post last week! I have little excuse, except that I had some lovely friends visiting and might have forgotten about this habit amidst the chaos. Anyway, I’m back now, and I come with exciting news! Two reviewers have submitted their comments after I submitted my review manuscript a month ago, and I’ve already begun responding to them. I hope to complete these “minor revisions” (in the journal’s Associate Editor’s words) within a week and move this work closer to publication. During the rest of the week, I’ve been attempting to improve the predictive power of a model I’ve fit within a planned simulation model, revising my thesis draft of my first primary analyses following feedback from my supervisor, conducting a second review of a transfusion-related manuscript, and finalising data access request documents for a near-future (I hope!) project. Things are changing fast, and I’m trying my best to keep up.

october 14, 2024: a week in the life

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this week

I’M BACK! After a period of annual leave from Oct 3-18, I’ve returned to Cambridge and am currently working from my college. In the few days before my travels and the day and a half since, I submitted our review paper for publication, made a lot of slide decks to share proposed ideas with my supervisor, fleshed out a manuscript version of my first primary analysis, and liaised with the undergraduate students who I’ll be leading seminars for in a few weeks :) I kept an eye on emails while away, so I have little to catch up on on that front. I’m still reeling, though, from a pile of outstanding to-dos.